Category: Breeding

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More on the Grand Canyon’s super-sunflower

Here’s some more information on that sunflower from Supai that I blogged about yesterday. There was a huge storm last night and I was stuck indoors with not much to do, so I tried to see if I could track down the accessions in question. They’re not for sale from Native Seed/SEARCH, though they are surely in their seed bank. So I went to GRIN, guessing that duplicates of the material had probably been deposited in the USDA system.

A quick text search on “Helianthus Supai” in GRIN’s “Accession area queries” page yielded 5 PI numbers. However, only 4 are “active.” It seems there may not be enough seed available for the fifth. Incidentally, there are also accessions of maize, devil’s horn and Cercis occidentalis from this site.

Now, I could click on each of the sunflower entries and look at the available evaluation data under “Observations” to track down the specific accession with rust resistance, but there is also another way. You can go to GRIN’s “Evaluation/characterization query” page, select sunflower, go to the descriptor list, and find the specific descriptors concerning rust resistance, one of which happens to have the code RUSTNUM3. ((The 3 refers to the particular race of the rust fungus Puccinia helianthi against which the material was tested.))

It turns out that of about 1000 sunflower accessions in the US National Plant Germplasm System for which there are rust data (out of a total of over 2500), only 8 have a RUSTNUM3 value of 100, meaning they are resistant to the fungus. And PI432512, collected by Gary Nabham in 1978 from Supai, is one of them.

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New media at IRRI

Our friends at the International Rice Research Institute seem to have some newish toys to play with, based on a couple of recent uploads to YouTube. If you’ve been molested by the speed bumps on the IRRI campus, you’ll want to hear how Mrs Carolyn Moomaw Wilhelm was responsible for setting them up, when she and her husband, the renowned rice breeder James Moomaw, first arrived at IRRI. Or you may prefer to hear Peter Jennings, IRRI’s first rice breeder, reminisce with “singular wit” on the importance of luck. And do stick with Nyle Brady’s reminiscences, (above); he eventually says that resistance to grassy stunt virus was found within just a few months, in samples that nobody suspected were resistant.

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Underwater sunflower

Update here.

You may have seen news of the dam that burst in the Grand Canyon National Park, necessitating the evacuation of several dozen people from the native American village of Supai. What you may not know is that Supai is quite famous in agrobiodiversity circles. ((And thanks to Colin for reminding me.))

Here’s an excerpt from a 2004 issue of Seedhead News, the newsletter of Native Seed/SEARCH, which focused on sunflower:

Anthropologist Frank Cushing found sunflowers growing in the gardens of the Havasupai when he visited in 1881. Although a decline in agriculture was noted around the 1940s, there were still sunflowers being grown in Supai when NS/S co-founders Gary Nabhan and Karen Reichhardt collected there in 1978. This was timely as devastating floods later nearly wiped out farming in the Havasupai’s homeland. Those seeds found in the bottom of the Grand Canyon are now being regenerated on our farm.

And here’s the money quote:

Australian sunflower farmers experienced a crisis when a new type of rust (a fungus) infected their plants. Research scientists found that Havasupai varieties of sunflower exhibit a unique gene that is resistant to this rust. Commercial varieties of sunflower seeds to be sold in Australia will now contain this important gene. Native Seeds/SEARCH was also instrumental in returning sunflower and other native crop varieties to the Havasupai to help rebuild their farming tradition.

But here’s the really cool part. The flow of genetic resources has not been in only one direction: USDA researchers are collecting sunflowers in Australia. Interdependence is all.

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News from the road

Apologies for the light blogging lately, but both Jeremy and I are on the road and busy with other stuff. When last seen, Jeremy was on vacation in Maine, dealing what will probably be the mortal blow to its lobster population. And I’ve been in and out of meetings all week, but I’ve got a couple of days off now and may have time to catch up on the old feed reader.

This is a good place to do that. I’m visiting the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. They have a very pleasant campus in a spectacular area with a well-developed ecotourism industry:

CATIE has a botanic garden and an active seedbank for forest species. But it also has an interest in agrobiodiversity conservation, with very important field genebanks of cacao, coffee and peach palm, and a crop seed genebank specializing in local vegetables, maize and beans. More later.

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Nibbles for the road: Baobab, Breeding, Gardening, Earthworms, Taro, Pollinators, Llama, Trees, Chili peppers